Hi there!

[Lyrillies]

Hi all,

I am new here and thought I'd best start by introducing myself a bit. I am a world builder and have been inventing new worlds for as long as I can think, joined a german world building community more than ten years ago and have had lots of fun with it all.
But world builders need maps of course (and apart from needing them I simply love maps) - so I drew my maps first by hand, then switched to photoshop and yesterday I finally decided to try and create 3D-images and maps of my worlds. I downloaded terragen and started to play with it - only I couldn't figure out how to create custom height maps in the shape of my continents - so I asked the internet. And the internet brought me here.
I honestly didn't see much of this community or the forum yet, but the little I have seen so far blew me right off my feet. you guys are amazing and there is so, so much I can and want to learn from you. Not only about height maps and fractal terrains but also about all kinds and other forms of maps. For example I didn't even try to create a city map yet, not after so many years of building my own world…
Right now I am a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content here, but i am sure I will find my way around soon I have attached two samples of one of my maps so you guys can get a glimpse of my current work.

Amandur_aktuell_gross2.jpgAmandur_politisch_neu_details_gross.gif

[arsheesh]

Welcome to the Guild Lyrillies! I can definitely relate to your experience, I was blown away and a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of awesome content here when I first joined up. You are already off to a great start though. I look forward to seeing more of your work.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Lyrillies]

Thanks! I already started trying out some stuff from the tutorials and it's amazing! Although very bad for the university work that's piling up…

[IrmaZwart]

Wow so you create worlds too! That's fantastic!
Your maps look really good, and big too, I like the style you're doing
Seems like you also created some sort of new language, if I see the very beautiful names on your map?
And who are your worlds inhabitants?

[Lyrillies]

thanks Irma
the problem with my maps so far is that they are a product of luck, I probably couldn't recreate them if I tried… So I hope I'll learn enough here to improve that in the future. And yes I did create a language, it's called Ascam and is mostly spoken on the continent you can see in the maps. I have three other continents, though. And all in all over twenty different types of creatures living there - but no humans!

[IrmaZwart]

Practice, practice and practice, in the end that's the key. I'm sure you'll be lucky more times
Wow so amazing that you create a language, how did you do it? I mean, do you also have grammer and such? It seems so difficult :p
Ascam sounds very good.
And the creatures, do you create them yourself? Or are they like mythical creatures or something?

[Bogie]

Welcome to the Guild Lyrillies! And welcome to you to Irma!

[IrmaZwart]

Thank you, Bogie!

[Lyrillies]

Thanks Bogie!

@Irma: Haha yes I guess you're right! I'm sure they can teach me enough here to understand more of what I'm doing when I fiddle around with photoshop in the future!

Inventing the language actually wasn't as difficult as it sounds - I found words that I liked and thought about what they could mean, but then of course you also need a way to string words together into a sentence, so you just start making up rules and before you know it you have a basic grammar system, and that already helps a lot when you hit the more difficult elements of a language. But all in all you mostly need an idea of where you want to go with that language. For Ascam, I wanted it to sound very melodic and continuous, without any major audible breaks between words or sentences, so that's what I started with when I designed the grammar.

The creatures are all my original design, the basic thought when I started the world was that I wanted everything to be different from the real earth, so no humans, no mythical figures we already know, a different set of physics and different laws of nature. Of course that also has a limit. Most of my creatures are at least slightly humanoid cause re-inventing bowls, plates, and the (literal) wheel was more than I wanted to do, what with there being so many other things that needed to be invented…
I actually have a website about my world, but it's all in german.

[IrmaZwart]

I have respect for you, when you say it, making a language seems so easy haha, but I tried once and I just couldn't figure it out. Maybe I should try the way you do it
Ascam must be a very beautiful language.

It's so nice that you didn't create any human, because human actually are quite weird creatures . Your world absolutely sounds amazing!!
Could I please see your website? I have german at school, so I can understand it a little bit